Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Low Cost LMS

I received an inquiry about the need for a low cost LMS solution and I've not had time to help this person with answers. I'm hoping folks can chime in with suggestions and resources. I'll try to aggregate them together.

Situation description:

I have talked to several vendors and have received quotes at the 6-8k (per year) range for the licensing. We have roughly 500 learners and would use the LMS for mainly tracking and registration of ILT courses, communication (possibly through message boards), and posting of class materials. The development of e-Learning is being done through Captivate, so I do not need a system with authoring capabilities.

I have not had much luck with open source LMS programs, mainly because of technical limitations on our part. Do you have any recommendations on which programs to consider? Also, are the price quotes mentioned above reasonable?

What would you suggest?

Also, my guess is that looking at License costs is probably a bad idea here since quite often there are services, hosting, etc. costs that can exceed license costs. So, help on effective all-in low cost LMS solutions would be good.

Tim Seager of Xerceo posted about this issue and suggested a some resources:

GSA Advantage - This is a very interesting site to visit and see pricing that's been established by contract with the government. Simply type the LMS vendor name or LMS name in the search bar and it should give you the per user/ per installation pricing. Smaller vendors may not be found. And it can be difficult to interpret some of the results. Still fantastic to have a resource with pricing.

This netted some interesting material including the following list that is the list in the Brandon Hall report.

Absorb LMS (Blatant Media e-Learning)

Acadia HCS (Acadia HCS)

Allen Communication Learning Portal

Avilar WebMentor

Course-Source (Course-Source Limited)

CourseMill LMS (Trivantis)

DOTS (WebRaven)

ED Training Platform (Strategia)

Generation 21 Enterprise

InforSource (InfoSource)

Inquisiq EX (ICS Learning Group Inc.)

IntraLearn XE (IntraLearn Software)

Isoph Blue (Learn Something)

Kallidus LMS (e2train)

LearnerWeb (MaxIT)

LearnShare LMS (Learnshare)

LMS Live (Wizdom Systems)

MindFlash E-Learning System

NetDimensions EKP Bronze

OnPoint Learning & Performance Suite

On-Tracker LMS (Interactive Solutions)

OutStart Evolution LMS (OutStart)

SSElearn Portal (SSE)

Syntrio Enterprise (Syntrio)

TeraLearn LMS (Teralearn.com)

The Learning Manager (Worldwide Interactive)

Tracker.Net (Platte Canyon)

TrainingPartner (Geometrix)

TrainingMine (Frontline Data Solutions)

Upside LMS (Upside Learning Solutions)

Virtual Training Assistant (RISC)

What systems are missing here? How would you potentially proceed through this list?

Maybe it's money well spent to buy the report?

I tried to find information from the eLearningGuild, but had a hard time finding anything. You can certainly go back and look at: LMS Satisfaction Features and Barriers. It's getting a bit old now, but you can at least see a little about some of these systems.

Moodle (and Sakai) aren't listed because they specifically are concerned about their IT staff's ability to support an installation. Not sure about having a hosted version of Moodle. Maybe that's a good answer for them. I personally don't have experience with hosted Moodle.

@Susan - If you have a large portion of the workforce who are not current Facebook users does Udutu make sense?

@Don - I would think that Plateau, etc. would end up being more expensive than their price range. Am I wrong on that?

I agree with the commenters above, the requirements are more for a Learning Content Management System. I've successfully used Moodle and Atutor for similar projects. Both are open source LMSs that would meet the requirements of the person asking for help. If I remember correctly both also offer support packages so that the implementer can get the help they need to customize their LMS, for much less than the commercial yearly licensing costs of closed source LMSs. http://www.atutor.ca/services/ and http://moodle.com/ show the support options and providers.

Tony - i didn't see where they suggested what the budget was; however they did say that they had vendors give them 6-8k estimated. this should have keyed me to the fact they didn't want to spend a lot - - i missed it. and you are right - both Meridian and Plateau would be on the higher $$ end of LMS.

but i think an LMCS is more in line with what these folks are looking to accomplish. course there's a price range of 0-big bucks there too....

Hosted Moodle and aTutor are both available. If you go to moodle.com (yes, .com) you can find companies that host and support moodle. I have heard of schools using these sites and concuming no internal IT resources. I have no experience with aTutor hosting.

With regards to the learning curve: they all have it. Fortunately tools like Moodle allow SCORM content to be uploaded so there are many options for creating content.

LMS for mainly tracking and registration of ILT courses, communication (possibly through message boards), and posting of class materials for 500 learners? They could probably could just build a database in Lotus Notes or something. I'm not sure if an LMS is the solution. Some free o/s options I don't see mentioned: Dokeos, and .Lrn. Two other possible commercial solutions not on ourlist: KnowledgeHub (ElementK), and Adventus. Good luck!

If they are looking to trial Moodle before taking the plunge full on, we host about 50,000 users on our Moodle platform which is free to use at the standard level (currently that is carte blanche on the system).

My situation was very similar to the one here. I looked for a long time and finally decided on ClickCourse from Rapid Intake. (see my blog post) It's cheap, but really only handles online courses. We haven't implemented it yet (budget issue) so I can't comment on the implementation.

I agree with Matt... I am really surprised Moodle was not listed. We have been using Moodle for over 5 years at our University. The program is "free" and allows you to customize areas you need customized. I would vote for Moodle.

Blackboard, the leading e-learning software company has just released a low cost offering. I would look into their solution. Moodle and other LMS software are fine, but Blackboard has the stability and the reliability of a enterprise application. This low cost offering is built specifically for what you are talking about with regards to size of students and functionality.

iHRTrain.com, by Honor Systems.www.ihrtrain.com - click login and use student1 as the user name and password to demo.

Excellent! Host it on their servers or buy it and host it yourself. If you buy it they will install it for you and configure the virutal session tool that allows you to click within the course and host online meetings or classes. Cost effective and easy to use!

UpsideLMS OnDemand, from Upside Learning, India's fastest growing Learning solutions company comes out as a great fit for the needs mentioned in terms of functional requirements as well as the overall budget.

Additionally UpsideLMS is low on cost on a recurring basis too, which I feel is equally important to evaluate and validate at the time of purchase.

And all this at no compromise to the features offered. We have worked with a number of customers with similar needs and budgets and all are extremely happy.

UpsideLMS OnDemand not only has a separate module for managing and tracking classroom training but also allows for a blended delivery and tracking seamlessly.

Please visit www.upsidelearning.com or write to sales@upsidelearning.com for more details and assistance.

ePath Learning has a great hosted LMS/LCMS with a very low cost of entry - should fit the budget for this 500 person organization. It has all the functionality they are looking for and with the LCMS features, they can build content inside the application or use third-party tools. Whatever they choose.

ILT Systems (www.iltsystems.com) has a really easy to use, trouble-free LMS with lots of great features and the cost is low! Not only that, the service we had was fabulous. They were always there to help me when I needed it. And they will customize the LMS anyway you want it! Contact me if you want to know more. I don't think they are that well known, but they have a loyal following. I'm a big fan.

About Me

Dr. Tony Karrer works as a part-time CTO for startups and midsize software companies - helping them get product out the door and turn around technology issues. He is considered one of the top technologists in eLearning and is known for working with numerous startups including being the original CTO for eHarmony for its first four years. Dr. Karrer taught Computer Science for eleven years. He has also worked on projects for many Fortune 500 companies including Credit
Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan,
Universal, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Fidelity
Investments, Symbol Technologies and SHL Systemhouse. Dr. Karrer was
valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University
of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30
engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer
Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events.